Concert Report: Will Kimbrough @ Kirk Avenue Music Hall - Roanoke, VA 1/31/10

This Sunday I had the rare treat of seeing Will Kimbrough. I say rare because  it's rare that a good show comes through this area. Hopefully that is all changing because the venue Will was playing at, Kirk Avenue Music Hall in Roanoke is a very "Folk/Alt Country/Americana" friendly venue. Chris Knight played there a few months back (which I didn't find out about until after the fact), Dave Alvin will be playing there in a couple of weeks, and Tom Russell will be playing there early this summer. Those are just some of the bigger acts, they pretty much have a good show every week, check out their schedule, and it is highly recommended if you are in the Roanoke area. The place is right downtown, easy to get to, ample parking (of course that could have been due to the recent snowstorm and snow covered streets). Also, any bands reading this, this would be a great venue to stop at when you are driving up 81 from Knoxville or Charlotte to Charlottesville or Richmond (which most of you do).

Now, about the show....AMAZING. Will is such an incredible guitar player, such an incredible songwriter, such an incredible singer, and most importantly such an incredible entertainer. Will played from 7:30 to 10:30 taking about a 30 minute break in between. Nothing but Will, an acoustic guitar, and a happy audience. The most remarkable thing to me was just how much sound was coming from this one man and his guitar. It took me a few songs to catch on to what he was doing. He had a loop pedal and he was playing leads over his own rhythm playing. A couple instances he even laid down bass lines, and percussion by beating on his guitar....all this without missing a beat and in some cases playing harp to boot.

I went into this show a casual Will Kimbrough fan, knowing him from his many producing and sideman credits (such as Todd Snider, and Rodney Crowell), and I came out of this show a HUGE fan. So much so I can't wait for his new album Wings which comes out the Feb. 23rd, and pre-orders begin Feb. 3rd at www.willkimbrough.com (watch this vid where Will tells you all about it). You can also download the song "Three Angels" here.

Now I did take a lot of vid this time, but I will only post a couple. The first is the title track off the upcoming album "Wings". He prefaced this to say that Jimmy Buffet will also be recording his own version of this song, but his is a little different.




Next up is a vid of the rousing tribute to Chuck Berry and Yo Yo Ma.....the aptly titled Yo Yo Ma. This one includes the intro which will explain everything you need to know. This vid also shows off his loop pedal skills and just how much sound one man can make.....also some of the wildest Chuck Berry-ish guitar playing you are likely to ever see done on an acoustic guitar.



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Concert Report: James McMurtry @ Attitudes in Blacksburg, VA 10/17/09

Well let me do a quick write-up about this. For those who have seen McMurtry perform you folks already know it was a killer show. Everyone I've ever talked to as a matter of fact who has seen McMurtry live all say he is amazing. This concert, friends, was no different.

A rare treat for us in the New River Valley to have a performer of this caliber come to town, and also my first McMurtry show. James said he had been trying to get down to Blacksburg for years, as he grew up in Loudon County Virginia, and he said half of his friends went to college at Virginia Tech. We are glad he finally got here. The place was small and in a holiday inn (or was it a mariott) and there were only maybe 70 people there, but every one of them was a McMurtry fan. Some came from West Virginia, Roanoke, North Carolina, even Kentucky. It was a pretty good mix of people from intellectuals familiar with McMurtry's NPR features, to old hippies from Floyd, VA, to rowdy hell raisers happy to partake in the $1 PBR special (this being the camp I myself most closely fell). One group suspiciously absent though were students...hmm...their loss.

When McMurtry and The Heartless Bastards took the stage as a power trio, the dance floor filled and the band kicked into Bayou Tortous (Tortue??) [watch a clip of Bayou Tortous].

The energy of the show was incredible, and later in the show we found out why. During his rousing (and I mean ROUSING!) rendition of crowd favorite (by crowd I mostly mean me) Choctaw Bingo he riffed that they had just gotten back to the states from the UK the day before, and it's good to see some people moving their asses for a change! He then tagged on "they're good people they just don't move". Everyone was moving at this place, in fact Choctaw built to such a climax he could have easily lead us all happily dancing and grooving into the mouth of a fiery volcano....it was that kind of concert! [watch a clip of Choctaw Bingo]

While the concert was mostly a rowdy ass rock show including killer versions of Red Dress, Too Long in The Wasteland, and my new favorite Lobo Town, (which goes with my theory that the rowdiness of a show is inversely proportional to the price of beer at said show), he did play a couple slow ones. These were Ruby and Carlos, which he played solo and Hurricane Party. Mostly though it was high octane McMurtry and The Heartless Bastards, who he quipped were going to have to change their name because "that band from Ohio has gotten too big". He then dubbed the band James McMurtry and The Motherfuckers, which he didn't think was taken yet. Someone in the crowd yelled "Go Motherfuckers go!", and that's the best way to sum up this show.....Go motherfucker go!

Here is a full clip of Hurricane party, the only song I captured in full (click the other links above to see short clips)